The present invention relates generally to record-keeping in a gaming environment and more specifically to a record-keeping system and method using a computer-based infrastructure and information tag scanning devices.
Maintaining gaming machines in a gaming environment, such as that of a busy casino floor, is a very labor intensive undertaking. In particular, when money, or scripts in a cashless system, must be collected from the gaming area, specific problems with respect to accountability arise. These specific problems include missing money boxes, missed gaming machines, misallocated money and lost or stolen money. An individual will typically travel through the gaming area at regular intervals in order to retrieve money collected at each gaming machine. Casinos must mark or identify each gaming machine, as well as each removable money box associated with each gaming machine in some fashion that allows an accounting department to associate collected money to a particular gaming machine. The process of marking or identifying a removable money box at the gaming machine is usually done manually with paper, tags, tape, etc. Obviously, with the amount of human interaction involved with the identification and collection of removable money boxes, missing identifications, unreadable identifications, or misidentifications are prevalent. This leads to inaccurate accounting of money from gaming operations.
An additional problem with gaming machines having removable money boxes that are collected in this manner is the large amount of man-hours required to mark the removable money boxes and the accounting time necessary to ascertain the proper location of unidentifiable removable money boxes. The inventoried assets are numerous and fluidly move throughout the gaming area to meet the needs of a busy gaming operation. The various movements of the removable money boxes, their timing, and the volume of assets makes tracking the money boxes an extremely laborious undertaking that can lead to missing information, missed numbers, miscoding into accounting systems, and even completely missed gaming areas. Computers have been used in the past to help facilitate the assimilation of information from collected money, however, human input of the information was still necessary, and thus, errors were still prevalent. The amount of time required to manually input all necessary information into a computer was also very extensive.
The present invention is directed to a system and method for providing record-keeping in a gaming environment where money or scripts representing money are collected from a gaming area on a routine basis. Using a scanning device, information tags affixed to gaming machines and removable money boxes attached to the gaming machines are scanned for information regarding the identification of the gaming machines and money boxes. Once the information tags are scanned and a particular money box is associated with a particular gaming machine, this information is transmitted to a server computer to be stored in a database for later use with money counting and error assessment. Once all money boxes have been collected in a gaming area, the data can be assessed for anomalies by using a record-keeping program running on the server computer. Anomalies can be identified as missed gaming machines or missing money boxes in a given time frame.
In one embodiment of the present invention, the scanning device is used to identify full money boxes in a counting room during a counting procedure just prior to the counting of the money collected inside. Once the money has been counted, data representing the total amount of money, as well as the identification of the money box, is transmitted to the database in the server computer and associated with the particular gaming machine from which the money box originally came. This allows a user to assess more data for anomalies such as historical trends, poorly performing gaming machines, and lost money boxes after collection.
In another embodiment of the present invention, the information collected by the scanning device is transmitted to the database via an RF communication link between the scanning device and a computer connected to a computer network capable of communicating with the server computer. Alternatively, after all information has been gathered from a particular gaming area, the data collected by the scanning device is downloaded via a receiving base that is connected to a computer network capable of communicating with the server computer.
In yet another embodiment, the present invention employs a record-keeping program to assess the data collected in order to determine a number of anomalies. Anomalies include missing money boxes, missed gaming machines, arrangement of gaming machines, historical trends of gaming machines, historical trends of money box collection, maintenance of gaming machines and gaming areas, miscounted money boxes, and graphical timing trends.